Agency prayers assailed

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Mar 1, 2008 - Page: 4B

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The ACLU has challenged a prayer policy the Tangipahoa Parish School Board adopted last year after past wrangling with the civil-rights group over the legality of opening meetings with sectarian invocations, ACLU officials said Friday.

Filed Friday in U.S. District Court at New Orleans, the suit alleges the first-come, first-served prayer policy violates the First Amendment ban on government establishment of religion, including by favoring some religions over others or non-religion, a petition copy provided by the ACLU shows.

The suit is the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Louisiana’s seventh against the Tangipahoa Parish School Board over religion-in-schools issues. Two others are pending. A hearing on summary judgment motions in both cases is March 19, court records show.

Under the policy, school officials and children are not allowed to lead invocations, but clergy of congregations with an “established presence” in the parish and some chaplains are invited to do so annually, school and ACLU officials said. The qualified people offer prayers in the order they apply.

Despite the policy’s aim to distance the board from prayers, the board is intimately involved in policy administration through the board secretary and, thus, excessively involved with religion, the suit claims. It names the board and its nine individual members as defendants.

The suit, which seeks to halt use of the policy and have it declared unconstitutional, was not in the federal court’s online system Friday, but court officials said the suit was filed.

“The Constitution does not permit school boards to endorse or promote religion, because the government must remain neutral to religion,” Marjorie R. Esman, ACLU Foundation of Louisiana executive director, said in a statement Friday.

She said the board is “well aware” of the legal principle, “but chooses to flout the law rather than to obey it.”

School Superintendent Mark Kolwe said in a statement Friday the board feels strongly that expressions of prayer by clergy are “a great way to set the tone for meetings” and are protected free speech.

The suit alleges the board secretary told the plaintiff’s wife Oct. 8 she could not lead an invocation because she was nondenominational. The secretary invites clergy from a listing she develops with the Yellow Pages and other sources and does scheduling of prayers.

Plaintiff, a Loranger resident who is identified as “John Doe #2,” alleges he attended October, January and February meetings where Christian reverends made sectarian references offensive to him, thereby violating his civil rights. The prayers had references to “Jesus” or “Christ,” the suit claims.

“The plaintiff is placed in the untenable position of having to choose between sitting through an invocation, which he finds offensive, or leaving the room and returning when it is completed,” the suit claims.

The prayers are said in the board meeting room a few minutes before meetings start. The ACLU suit asserts prayers are neither taped nor on the board agenda, a “practice and pattern of deceit and subterfuge” to get around the law.